4 ms·

I can enter x3blah from memory. I can print it on a poster when promoting my service. I can't memorise AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7

I can enter x3blah from memory. I can print it on a poster when promoting my service. I can't memorise AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il. I can't print it on a poster when promoting my service. I can use a QR code, but that's ripe for exploitation. Someone can easily replace the QR code on my poster, and there's no way for anyone viewing the poster to know that it's not the correct QR code. What's the point of the name at all if it's not memorable? Or to put it another way, do you really want email address AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il@gmail.com?

squiggleblaz 6y ago
> I can't memorise AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il. I can't print it on a poster when promoting my service. I can use a QR code, but that's ripe for exploitation. Someone can easily replace the QR code on my poster, and there's no way for anyone viewing the poster to know that it's not the correct QR code. Which isn't a problem of the qr code, since you can't tell if someone replaced AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il with AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI17TE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il. At least you have a fighting chance of realising something is wrong when they say "x3blah has released a new album. Get it now from x4blah.com". Humans can only understand human understandable things.
x3blah 6y ago
If the point of the domain name for you is marketing, then get one you think is "memorable" and use it as a CNAME. The point for me would be non-marketing uses, e.g., to get an SSL cert so I do not have to use a self-signed one when monitoring encrypted egress traffic from the local network. That name does not need to be memorable. I can get a free cert from Let's Encrypt but I cannot get free domain name. Best I can get for free is a subdomain of someone else's domain name. As you know, not every domain name is used for the purposes of email addresses or a website. To use a common example, AWS Cloudfront subdomains are not memorable but they are useful to AWS. Like subdomains, domain names can still be useful without being memorable.
- gbear605 6y ago
  A lot of low-importance tlds offer domain names for $0.99/year. At that rate, I think almost anyone can afford it.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    What are some examples of such tlds?
    - gbear605 6y ago
      Hmm, it turns out that I’m actually wrong. I’d see domain registrars offer really cheap domains before, but they’re actually one or two year offers that then bump up to $10/year or $20/year. We need a tld that offers domains for really cheap with the understanding that it’s mainly for people owning shdkshfkskfjslfjsk.sometldname.
      - lokedhs 6y ago
        I'm checking Gandi.net, and .site, .website and .space seems to be around 1 USD per year. They are marketing it as 95% off, but that doesn't change the fact that it's that price.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > If the point of the domain name for you is marketing, then get one you think is "memorable" and use it as a CNAME. The point for me would be non-marketing uses This is a very fair and valid point. Thank you for pointing this out. > to get an SSL cert so I do not have to use a self-signed one when monitoring encrypted egress traffic from the local network This sounds like you're doing proxying / TLS interception / MITM? If so, you need a signing certificate with authority to sign for any arbitrary name. No vendor provides this for free, and using your own self generated CA is the solution here. > Best I can get for free is a subdomain of someone else's domain name. It's unclear what you mean here, as the words you're using are somewhat overloaded, depending on context. An arbitrary gTLD is not something you can get for free, until we have a better solution for DNS than the current approach. Anything else is just variations on a subdomain. Heck, technically even a gTLD is a subdomain of the root domain '.', where you don't own anything there either, and are simply getting a subdomain granted to you by the roots. When you look at it from that perspective, and you're simply looking for something that is unique for you, what's the difference between a subdomain from a dyndns provider, and a subdomain from a registry?

squiggleblaz 6y ago

> I can't memorise AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il. I can't print it on a poster when promoting my service. I can use a QR code, but that's ripe for exploitation. Someone can easily replace the QR code on my poster, and there's no way for anyone viewing the poster to know that it's not the correct QR code. Which isn't a problem of the qr code, since you can't tell if someone replaced AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il with AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI17TE5AAAAIFwAU7Q9tccWIyPviJuzAatFIgQZVRr7mExznfbUR9Il. At least you have a fighting chance of realising something is wrong when they say "x3blah has released a new album. Get it now from x4blah.com". Humans can only understand human understandable things.

x3blah 6y ago

If the point of the domain name for you is marketing, then get one you think is "memorable" and use it as a CNAME. The point for me would be non-marketing uses, e.g., to get an SSL cert so I do not have to use a self-signed one when monitoring encrypted egress traffic from the local network. That name does not need to be memorable. I can get a free cert from Let's Encrypt but I cannot get free domain name. Best I can get for free is a subdomain of someone else's domain name. As you know, not every domain name is used for the purposes of email addresses or a website. To use a common example, AWS Cloudfront subdomains are not memorable but they are useful to AWS. Like subdomains, domain names can still be useful without being memorable.

gbear605 6y ago
A lot of low-importance tlds offer domain names for $0.99/year. At that rate, I think almost anyone can afford it.
- tasuki 6y ago
  What are some examples of such tlds?
  - gbear605 6y ago
    Hmm, it turns out that I’m actually wrong. I’d see domain registrars offer really cheap domains before, but they’re actually one or two year offers that then bump up to $10/year or $20/year. We need a tld that offers domains for really cheap with the understanding that it’s mainly for people owning shdkshfkskfjslfjsk.sometldname.
    - lokedhs 6y ago
      I'm checking Gandi.net, and .site, .website and .space seems to be around 1 USD per year. They are marketing it as 95% off, but that doesn't change the fact that it's that price.
oarsinsync 6y ago
> If the point of the domain name for you is marketing, then get one you think is "memorable" and use it as a CNAME. The point for me would be non-marketing uses This is a very fair and valid point. Thank you for pointing this out. > to get an SSL cert so I do not have to use a self-signed one when monitoring encrypted egress traffic from the local network This sounds like you're doing proxying / TLS interception / MITM? If so, you need a signing certificate with authority to sign for any arbitrary name. No vendor provides this for free, and using your own self generated CA is the solution here. > Best I can get for free is a subdomain of someone else's domain name. It's unclear what you mean here, as the words you're using are somewhat overloaded, depending on context. An arbitrary gTLD is not something you can get for free, until we have a better solution for DNS than the current approach. Anything else is just variations on a subdomain. Heck, technically even a gTLD is a subdomain of the root domain '.', where you don't own anything there either, and are simply getting a subdomain granted to you by the roots. When you look at it from that perspective, and you're simply looking for something that is unique for you, what's the difference between a subdomain from a dyndns provider, and a subdomain from a registry?